California GOP's immigration problem

But GOP leaders appear uninterested in abandoning immigration stances that have warded off those voters – in part because many Republican constituents want the party to maintain a strict line on illegal immigration.

"When you deal with immigration, you run into quicksand," said California Republican Party Vice Chairman Tom Del Beccaro, the favorite to be elected CRP chairman in March. "We need to connect with the Latino community on jobs and education and security, and build up some good will. We can't always lead with the toughest issue."

Del Beccaro acknowledged the impact of Latinos in the state's political landscape. They accounted for 22 percent of ballots cast in November, according to Los Angeles Times exit polling. While GOP gubernatorial nominee Meg Whitman won among non-Latino white voters, she lost badly among Latinos, getting somewhere between 15 percent and 22 percent of their vote, according to exit polls.

In addition to helping carry Jerry Brown to the governorship, Latinos contributed to Democrats sweeping every statewide seat and not losing a single Legislative seat in an election where Republicans racked up big gains in most other states.

Part of the problem is that Latino voters don't see themselves reflected in the state GOP: There is no longer a single Republican Latino in the state Legislature and not one GOP Latino in the state's congressional delegation. Democrats have 23 Latinos in the Legislature and six in the state's congressional delegation.

Political analysts and Latino leaders agree that the future of the Republican Party in the state depends on transforming those goose eggs.

"Otherwise, they're going to become an ever-shrinking minority party," said Arturo Vargas, executive director of the National Association of Latino Elected Officials. Looking at it from the other side, Vargas said Latinos would benefit from a better relationship with the GOP because then Democrats couldn't take their vote for granted.

"We absolutely need Latinos involved in both parties," he said. "The Latino community doesn't benefit from a partisan monopoly."

The importance of the Latino vote will continue to grow. Latinos now account for 37 percent of California's population, and will outnumber non-Latino whites by 2020, according to state Department of Finance projections. By 2040, Latinos will be majority of Orange County residents and by 2050, they will account for a majority of the state's population.

The big dilemma

The elephant in the room is immigration.

Del Beccaro's platform in his campaign for CRP chairman, as it appears on his campaign website, does not mention immigration. And while Scott Baugh, chairman of the Republican Party of Orange County, says comprehensive immigration reform is needed, he doesn't offer any suggestions for what to do with those in the country illegally.

"There are a thousand different scenarios and we have to figure out which will work best," Baugh said.

Del Becarro, Baugh and many other Republicans agree that there should be no piecemeal legalization of those now in the country illegally until issues such as border security and workplace enforcement are addressed.

That position was reflected in the GOP's staunch opposition last year to the DREAM Act, which would have provided a path to citizenship for those who graduated from a U.S. high school and enrolled in college or enlisted in the military. The House passed the bill 216-198, while Republicans voted 8-160. In the Senate, Republicans blocked it from going to a vote.

In 2001, when the state Legislature approved in-state college tuition for illegal immigrant children who'd attended at least three years of California high school, the combined vote of the Assembly and Senate was 84-22. The vote among Republicans in the two chambers was 8-22.

"They say they're going to change and attract Latinos, but without changing their policies," said Lisa Garcia Bedolla, a political scientist who teaches cultural studies at UC Berkeley. "There's a willful ignorance that allows them to think that they can bash illegal immigrants because they don't vote. But even native-born Latinos see it targeted toward them. There are a lot of mixed families, and these people move in and out of each others' lives."

In 1994, Gov. Pete Wilson and the state GOP led the charge to pass Proposition 187, the measure – eventually thrown out in court – that tried to halt all public services to illegal immigrants. The state's Latino voters fled the GOP, and many Republican strategists vowed to never repeat such a mistake.

In 1992, two years before Prop. 187, Democrats had a 10 percentage point advantage in the state's voter registration. That advantage is now 13 points.

One Republican whose support among Latinos continued to grow at the time of Prop. 187 was Texas Gov. George W. Bush, who spoke out against the measure. Bush's in-roads with Latinos carried over to his election as president. But while many Republicans cheered his example, fewer were eager to follow it – particularly when he called for national immigration reform that provided amnesty for illegal immigrants.

The middle path

Whitman’s campaign demonstrated the difficulty in winning the vote of both anti-illegal immigration stalwarts and Latinos.

At the outset of her campaign, Whitman stated that she needed to win over Latinos and outperform typical GOP candidates in that community to win. But when Republican primary opponent Steve Poizner made illegal immigration a centerpiece of his campaign, Whitman fought back by saying she’d be “tough as nails” on the issue – and featured the border fence in an ad.

She stopped short of embracing Arizona’s law cracking down on illegal immigrants and declined to discuss strategies for those in the country illegally, but called for tighter border control and more workplace enforcement. By the general election, she’d dug a hole for herself with Latinos and it got deeper with her handling of news that she’d hired and fired an illegal immigrant maid.

The state’s GOP leaders don’t have Whitman’s maid problem, but do take policy positions similar to hers.

Top Republicans are steering clear of both a proposed ballot measure to bring the Arizona law to California and of an effort in other states to challenge the interpretation of the Constitution that children of illegal immigrants become citizens if born here. At the same time, they are trying to maintain the backing of voters who support the Minuteman Project and Huntington Beach’s Barbara Coe, a co-author of Prop. 187, despite wariness over those activists’ policy positions.

“The Republican Party includes the Minutemen but comments from people like the Minutemen and Barbara Coe serve to disenfranchise Latino voters,” said Manuel Ramirez, co-founder of Orange County’s Hispanic 100. The group is working to build a broader bridge between the GOP and Latinos.

Ramirez says the new open primary should help GOP candidates who are more sympathetic to Latinos. The new system will allow voters to cross party lines in primary voting, and advances the top-two vote getters regardless of party affiliation.

“The open primary certainly allows for less conservative, more moderate candidates,” Ramirez said. “It will mitigate, to some extent, the need to appeal to anti-immigration voters.”

While immigration may be the highest profile dilemma for Republicans, Latino support for public services – which is greater than that of general population – also works against conservative positions.

“It’s hard to believe that Republicans are going to get any traction with this constituency talking about tax cuts when this constituency largely supports public spending,” said Raphael Sonenshein, who teaches political science at Cal State Fullerton.

While Del Beccaro emphasizes the need to communicate better with Latinos and focus on common issues like jobs and education, Sonenshein and Garcia Bedolla both question how far the GOP can get without addressing the core issues of immigration and public services.

“Communicating and connecting are two different things,” Sonenshein said. “Communicating is saying, ‘I have a pretty good product and you should buy it.’ Connecting comes from being skeptical about your product and encouraging input from your potential customer.

“It seems to me that Republicans are clinging to their core beliefs and don’t want to give them up.”

More on Latinos and the GOP:

Some Republicans urged the party to tone down its rhetoric on immigration and to take up comprehensive reform in Congress during a Florida conference this week hosted by the new new Hispanic Leadership Network. Read the story.